On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

Twenty-Three

Yesterday, after getting her period, Hester went straight home, showered, took a couple of pain pills, and passed out—guilt and self-pity ameliorated, for the time being. She didn’t hear a thing when Al came home. The next morning he was gone before she woke up, which was unusual.

The first person Hester ran into when she got to school, was Theo. He stopped her outside the main office, “Hester, so many rumors are flying around, what really happened yesterday?”

“I don’t know a thing about what happened yesterday.”

“Didn’t you talk to Al last night?” Theo seemed confused.

“Theo, if you must know, I was asleep before Al came home, and he left before I got up this morning. So no, I didn’t talk to my husband last night. Look, I have go, and I really don’t know a thing about any rumors.”

Hester tried to get away from Theo. She didn’t feel all that great, and she wanted to talk to Al before she lost her courage; but Theo blocked her way and insisted on filling Hester in on all the details.

There had been trouble, bad trouble. It was the new biology teacher, Cyril Banks. He’d done something terribly wrong.

Most staff members thought Cyril was weird. He looked weird. His head was shaped like a light bulb with a high forehead, his small eyes, nose, and mouth compressed into the bottom third of his face. He kept an embalmed two-headed squirrel in a jar on his desk and a live ferret named Mama in a cage on top of his file cabinet.

Cyril Banks loved his ferret. He told his students about the Chinese belief, ferrets are the reincarnations of departed human spirits, which makes them wise creatures. If Mr. Banks became annoyed with a student who wouldn’t listen or do what he asked, he’d say, “Let’s go see what Mama thinks your punishment should be.” He’d make the student stand in front of the ferret, confess his or her crime, and ask for just punishment. Mr. Banks, arms crossed, foot tapping, watched Mama and waited for her decision.

“There, see, Susie, see how Mama is thinking it over.”

The ferret never did anything unusual, but after a few minutes, Mr. Banks said excitedly, “There you have it, you must clean out Mama’s cage after school.”

Needless to say, after a while, no one misbehaved in Mr. Banks’s room because no one wanted to touch Mama, let alone clean her cage. The students thought Mr. Banks was nuts, but his quirkiness was tempered by his innate good nature, so nobody minded being in his class. In fact, he was beginning to develop a bit of a cult following.

However, according to Theo, who had spoken to Cyril himself, something, went amiss yesterday in Mr. Banks’s room. Cyril said that when he unlocked his door in the morning, long before Ben, the custodian, turned on the hall lights, he sensed something was not right. A foul stench filled the room. Mama was in her cage stretched out like a slender boa of white and black fur. She didn’t move and Cyril, upon closer examination, saw that her bodily fluids had pooled on the newsprint beneath her. She was dead. Ben must’ve smelled the rotten odor and came in to investigate. Cyril, who was filling a large specimen jar with formaldehyde and gently slipping Mama into it, ignored the janitor, placed the jar on his desk next to the jar that held the two-headed squirrel, and said to himself, “This is all my fault, and I will have to be punished for it.”

Ben mumbled, “Sorry about your ferret.”

Cyril still didn’t acknowledge Ben’s presence, but went instead to the blackboard and wrote in large letters, “Mama is dead. Please, no questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Banks.”

Ben left, and Cyril followed him out of the room and went to the office to pick up his mail.

In the office, Cyril bumped into Theo and, uncharacteristically, launched into a nervous monologue about his dead ferret and his extreme reservations about beginning the new, mandatory unit on the human reproductive system that day. The board of education approved the curriculum last summer. Human sexuality, birth control, safe sex, and so forth were now all part of his eleventh-grade biology course.

Cyril, who never questioned his superiors and always did what was required of him, argued bitterly with Jim Hawson, his supervisor, over the changes. He did not want to talk about sex. He would certainly cover the biology of the reproductive systems, but he would not deliver instruction on sexual behavior. Wasn’t that covered in health class? Wasn’t that bad enough? His students were children. He preferred to think of them as innocent.

Being raised Christian, instructed in his faith at Shiloh Baptist in Trenton, Cyril lived his religion. Besides, what would his mama, dead almost thirteen years now, think of him talking about such sinful behavior in front of young unmarried people? Jim Hawson didn’t seem to care about Cyril’s personal beliefs.

“Just do your job and don’t take it personally,” is what Hawson had told him.

But Cyril did take it personally. He’d struggled to become a teacher. It had taken him ten long years to finish college. He hadn’t started taking classes until the September after his mother died when he was twenty-eight years old. Mama had depended on him. She wasn’t married and never had been. Cyril was all she had, except for her brother, Uncle Tad, who only came around once in a great while. How could he leave her alone and go off to college like other young people? No, he stayed with her and took care of her and did whatever she wanted him to. It was the least he could do to pay her back for raising him right.

So when she died, he had plenty of time on his hands. He worked days as a security guard at Quakerbridge Mall and went to classes in the evening. He tried not to feel lonely, but he missed his mama. In his mind he could picture her rheumy eyes, the palms of her hands the color of sand, the broad flat feet he rubbed with lavender cream before he tucked her in at night. He remembered how good her warm breath felt on his forehead when he leaned over for her to kiss him there. He loved his mama more than any girl he ever met, and many girls, especially at Shiloh, had tried hard to please him.

He’d told Mr. Murphy all of this without being asked in his interview for the position, and Al had hired him anyway. Cyril wasn’t stupid. He knew Sourland High desperately needed to diversify their staff. The state was putting pressure on the “Crisco” districts to hire teachers of color. Cyril was in his early forties and not what you would call dynamic during the interview, but he’d graduated from college summa cum laude and he was certified, and that was good enough for Al, who was always willing to do cartwheels when it came to guaranteeing state funding.

Theo told Hester that Cyril was talking fast and appeared to be very upset. Theo tried to ease Cyril’s worries by telling Cyril his students were probably having a lot more sex than he was.

“In hindsight, Hester, it probably wasn’t the best thing to say,” said Theo.

“Why?” asked Hester.

“Because when Cyril went back to his classroom, Ben was there cleaning the windows. Ben told me that Cyril went to his desk, opened the jar that held the two-headed squirrel, and started talking weirdly about some uncle of his named Tad. This uncle, apparently, was the only father figure in Cyril’s life; and it was Uncle Tad who’d shot the deformed creature in the woods along the Delaware River last year. He brought the hideous specimen to Cyril, whom he considered a great scientist. Cyril told Ben, he loved the remarkable anomaly, two heads perfectly shaped, both with two clear eyes the shape and color of small almonds. Each nose had two pinpoint nostrils and identical silver streaks across the bridges of their noses. The single neck so thick, the body muscular and lean, despite all the eating the two mouths must’ve been capable of. Cyril’s uncle had shot it cleanly through the abdomen with a small bullet, so neither of its heads had been disturbed. Which head was dominant was impossible to tell, said Cyril. Uncle Tad had pointed out the testicles saying, ‘Ain’t they like small, gray olives on either side of that tiny penis.’

“Then Cyril picked up the limp the squirrel in his gloved hands and held it like a minister might hold a sick, fragile infant for an emergency christening. At this point, Cyril looked up at Ben and asked him to leave.”

‘What could I do? I left,’ Ben told me, and that’s all I know for sure.”

“Geeze, Theo, a ferret died. What’s the big deal?” asked Hester.

“Oh, there’s more, but you better ask your husband. I don’t want to be spreading rumors.”

“Right.” Hester nodded as she eased away from the overwrought Theo and headed to Al’s office.

Theo wasn’t exaggerating. There was more, and it wasn’t pretty.

When Mr. Banks’ eleventh-grade biology class arrived, they were curious about what was on his desk under a white sheet. Many of the girls gasped and sighed when they read the news on the blackboard about Mama. Some of the boys snickered, but stopped when they saw the sad look on Mr. Banks’s face. His skin was ashen, and his lips were drawn together tightly. His wire-rimmed glasses magnified the wary look in his eyes that glistened like wet stones.

As several of the students later described the incident, Mr. Banks did not seem to be himself. He said nothing to them. He waited for the bell to ring, went to his desk, and gently lifted the sheet. Many of the students gasped at what they saw. Mama’s small limbs were pinned down to a wooden specimen board, her belly sliced open, her skin stretched back and tacked down. Her thumb-sized heart was muddy brown. Her lungs were like a pair of tiny earlobes with no head in between. Her uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes seemed oversized and prominent in the small cavity that held them.

Next to her the two-headed squirrel was similarly arranged on another board with one head facing toward Mama and the other toward the door. His testicles and penis rested limply atop his damp tail that pointed downward. Mr. Banks began to talk about the reproductive systems of the squirrel and the ferret. His lecture started out fairly normally, but somewhere in the middle of it, he got off track. It was reported by the students, who claimed to have been interested in the lesson, that he began talking to the dead animals instead of to the students. Then Mr. Banks began hollering at the specimens as though they were real people. He started calling the squirrel Uncle Tad.

“I never told mama, never, Uncle Tad, never. But it wasn’t her fault like you said. You old bastard. Damn you. Damn you.”

Mr. Banks started crying and hollering things that ceased to make any sense, until Anna Porter, a smart girl and a good student, went up to him and whispered, “Excuse me, Mr. Banks, but I’m going to get Principal Heck. I’ll be right back.” She left quickly, not waiting for Mr. Banks to respond. She came back with Al instead of the principal.

Cyril had his back to the class and was hunched over the two dead animals, staring blankly at them. Al put a firm hand on Cyril’s back and led him out of the classroom and down to his office, where Al spent a long time talking to him.

“Poor Cyril just cracked,” said Al. “But I did damage control, and I think I got through to him. I made him promise to get counseling ASAP. What a day it was. Fucking stressful, really.” Al slunk back in his chair and shook his head. “On a different topic…how are you doing, honey? I didn’t wake you up last night because it was late, and I know you need your rest now. You feeling alright?” He leaned forward and looked like he was about to get up when his phone rang. He picked it up and looked at her forlornly.

“Really? Are you sure? Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

He hung up. His expression turned somber. He went to Hester, kissed her tenderly, and whispered in her ear, “Bad news. Cyril shot and killed his uncle last night. They’ve got him in custody at the municipal building. He’s asking for me before they take him away. Sorry, gotta go. Love you, and love our baby.”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him at a time like this so she blew him another kiss and said, “We love you too.”

Twenty-Four

Garret Timms was charged with neglect. Ginny had been sitting on that toilet for months. The news made the headlines of the
Palm Beach Post,
accompanied by a photo of Garret, who looked like a deer caught in headlights.

Hester put the paper down. There were weeds to be pulled. Keeping busy was better than sitting around feeling badly about Ginny Timms. The soil in the bed of ginger plants needed to be loosened and fertilized.

Hester was hacking at the dirt with a hand rake when the Hampton family stopped by the hibiscus bush in front of her trailer. Lila Hampton had one son, Phil, and he was visiting with his wife and their three kids. Lila was explaining in a lilting voice about how it’s warm enough in Florida for plants like hibiscus to bloom year-round. The young granddaughters, two year old triplets, sniffed the flowers and giggled.

The girls, though all the same size, were not identical. Two were plain girls with straight brown hair and brown eyes. The other sister had platinum curls and eyes the color of new grass. She reached forward and plucked the biggest flower and toddled over to her father Phil, a slim, handsome, young man. He stared down fondly at his sweet daughter. She stopped short of him and threw the blossom at him with all her might. It hit his pants and fluttered to the ground.

The father’s pleasant face fell into a frown. The child looked at him, tilted her head quizzically to the side, then ran to him; but Phil didn’t bend down to embrace the toddler. Instead, he let her cling to his thighs. She tried to hide her head in his crotch.

Lots of children do that
, the thought crossed Hester’s mind as she watched.
With their mothers, it’s like they’re trying to crawl back into the womb.

Lila Hampton was commenting to her son and daughter-in-law about the intoxicating scent of gardenias, but Hester wasn’t listening. She couldn’t stop watching that small head, the soft white curls. It was starting to make Hester uncomfortable because the child’s face seemed stuck in the triangle of her father’s pants right where his penis was. Then Phil reached down without looking and patted the girl’s back, while his mother kept talking, now about how many gardenias grew in Pleasant Palms. The mother of the triplets, platinum and beautiful like the one daughter, seemed enthralled by her mother-in-law’s botanical musings, and unaware of what her husband was doing to her beautiful little daughter.

Lila was so animated, it was hard not to listen to her. But Hester was getting more nervous by the second about the platinum one and where her poor little face was. She watched as Phil stopped patting his daughter’s back. His large hand moved to the head of curls; and, Hester would swear to it, he pressed so hard on her head that half of it disappeared into him. Hester feared he was going to suffocate the child right in front of everyone. She looked at his face and his mouth fell open and turned up into a half smile. Behind his sunglasses, Hester imagined, his eyes rolling up into their sockets.

This was too much. Hester put down her tool and walked over to them.

“Hey, Lila, how would those triplets of yours like some cookies?” She shouted the word “cookies.” The little blonde head slipped out from under her father’s paw, and she ran away from him in Hester’s direction.

Hester scooped her up in her arms and hugged the little beauty. Before she turned to take the child into her trailer, Hester lifted up her sunglasses and stared at Phil. He still had his on and she couldn’t see his eyes, but she wanted him to see hers.

“You better be more careful with a child this age. You were pushing on her little head so hard, you could’ve snapped her little neck.” She said it loud, enunciating every syllable, so his wife and mother could hear it too. Even with a bit of a sunburn, Hester saw his skin redden and sensed his rage. So what? She’d rendered him speechless.

It was Lila who spoke, “Oh, Hester, he was only playing with her.”

“Don’t be such a fool, Lila.” Hester left with the child without seeking permission, took her into the trailer, and got some cookies. When she brought them out, Phil and his wife were gone. Lila was waiting with the two plain sisters and took the blonde one from Hester. As Hester handed the cookies out, and the children greedily bit into them, Lila angrily whispered to Hester, “Mind your own damn business,” and left.